An Open Letter to Whom It May Concern

I loved you once, and I love you still, same as I do your boy.  I understand how scared and confused you must've been those many years ago when trying to decide to stay in that abusive marriage or leave.  I know the abuse continued even after the kids grew up.  I remember you going to S.A.F.E. place after Thanksgiving one year, but you soon returned.  You slipped me some literature on what to pack and how to get away safely- your silent acknowledgment that you knew what I was going through in my little apartment with the apple of your eye.

I wish you'd been strong enough to leave when your kids were young before they soaked up all those experiences, and formed those hard-wired pathways in their growing brains.  They were fed; they were clothed; they had a roof over their heads, but what had they begun to consider normal?

You never deserved that abuse.  People would've helped you.  When you were lucky enough to have professionals to come to you when your boy was eight and tell you he needed mental health services, it may have drastically changed his life course if you'd ignored your fear, ignored the stigma, and accepted the help- the kind of help I wouldn't be offered until my baby girl was fifteen.  I can only look back and wish I'd known what to look for in Cory's behavior or what it meant.  To get her help before she ended puberty would've changed everything- so much time and productivity saved.

If I prayed, I'd pray for you laying your head down on your pillow at night, knowing all the horrors you've seen and experienced.  I have so much empathy for you.  But there is also anger, because I remember you telling me sometimes two people, no matter how much they love each other, just can't be together in that way; it's not safe.  You loved him madly, didn't you? You must have loved him the way I loved your boy.  He was the air I breathed.   Part of you still must..  You loved him so madly that you put the mental and physical health of your children at risk in order to stay.

You forgave.  You rationalized.  You set boundaries that he laughed off- drunk, and throwing take-out over the canal.

"I'm sorry my son is a monster."  you told me once.

He's not a monster.  He has an untreated mental illness.  He has a good heart.  He's wildly intelligent.  He loves helping people.
And even though his touch sent shivers down my spine, I will pass.  My kids deserve that.

By the way, Cory's illness, her mental illness, was called Schizoaffective Disorder.  It wasn't a chess move from Satan.  It wasn't caused by medications.  It is a brain disorder that is highly hereditary.  And it's treatable.  Even though you unknowingly or knowingly set your son up to have some major challenges in life, I'll never understand how you wrote her off the moment you realized what was wrong with her.  You told me the enemy was working for her soul.  You told me I should go to church more. You told me to beware of those pharmaceutical companies.  Never did you acknowledge that there is a prevalence of mental illness in your family history or in your husbands.

  All those little hello cards filled with trinkets sent to Cory when your son and I were making a go of it had stopped long ago, of course. Apparently, she stopped being your grandchild, the moment I stopped being Bob's significant other and subsequent caregiver.

But after?  After you knew what she was going through?  Three hospitalizations- one of which lasted 11 days.  A struggle to get an Individualized Education Plan to secure her high school diploma.  Not one card?  Flowers?  Nothing?  That I just can't get my head around.  She deserved some encouragement for doing something you yourself couldn't do for her father- fight the stigma, get the help, and get healthy without hurting anyone else to do it.  She was freaking amazing.

That is all.